BEST VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT

Pho Bang

The cooks at Pho Bang continue to craft the most outrageously decadent Vietnamese dishes in town. This long-standing restaurant doesn't get hung up on pretense -- dishes come rapid-fire out of the kitchen, sometimes sloppy on their plates, sometimes with nary a smile from our server. But the prices are so low, and the food so cunning, we never quibble. Besides our favorite pho (15 varieties), there's an impressive array of exotica like canh chua ca (catfish soup with pineapple and vegetables in a spicy lemon sauce), or tom va bo nuong vi.

How cool is it to sit down at our own tabletop grill, and be presented with a large plate circled with whisper-thin slices of lightly oiled raw beef, whole shrimp, sliced onion, chopped scallion and peanuts? On the side is xalach dia, an array of sliced carrot, cucumber, pickled radish, whole scallion heads, mint, cilantro and lettuce, alongside plates of rice paper sheets and butter. In fact, everything at this cozy hole-in-the-wall is remarkable.